Why use storytelling in the language learning classroom?

We use storytelling in language teaching for several reasons. One of the preliminary reasons is the funny and entertaining atmosphere storytelling creates in the classroom. A teacher of English needs to be imaginative and creative and use various strategies and activities to engage students with limited English skills. Storytelling and creating stories with the students can surely assist to make the process of teaching and learning more motivating, interesting and interactive. These are some of the numerous reasons for using storytelling effectively in your classroom:

• It promotes a feeling of well being and relaxation.
• Increases the children’s willingness to communicate thoughts and feelings.
• Fosters awareness of one’s unique imagination and creativity.
• Builds verbal self-confidence.
• Integrates multiple learning contexts (reading, listening, speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary) into a single instructional input.
• Builds community chemistry.
• Enhances reading, listening and critical thinking skills.
• Fosters teacher-learner collaboration (Fitzgibbon & Wilhelm, 1998).
• Enthralls empathy.

Storytelling is a skill that can be effectively directed to improve other skills, such as writing, grammar, listening and speaking. Donald Davis, a noted storyteller, teaches storytelling as a bridge between a child’s ‘first language’ [gestures and speech] and ‘second language’ [writing].

Here is a story that we created and practiced retelling with my beginner G3 students Yubin, Minato and Thomas.